Payload hash in Authentication Header (again) about hawk HOT 7 CLOSED

Requiring the entire payload to be loaded and parsed before authentication is a non-starter. It is poor server design. For example, in node, many times you just want to pipe an incoming request, like saving an uploaded file to disk. Once saved, you can calculate the payload hash and validate it. But you don't want to save the file first, before authenticating the request. This is a real-world example.

The only way to address it is to decouple (or at least make it optional) validating the integrity of the transmitted hash from validating the hash value against the payload. In the first we just make sure that the hash value wasn't tempered with. In the second we confirm it matches the payload.

Payload protection is hard. This is just half the story. The other is encoding of Unicode text which is going to cause paid in many implementation on the browser where the JS encoding isn't utf8 but node's default buffer to string encoding is.

Hawk isn't magic. You need to think about how to apply it. Payload protection is one example. Nonce verification is another. Both are tools provided to you by the protocol but you still need to know what you are doing to use it well.

from hawk.

All this is fine, but in that case it needs to be made clear when payload verification is something that happens post-process, because making it through the Hawk authentication layer says nothing about the contents of the payload regardless of whether payload verification is turned on or off in the server.

from hawk.

Made clear to who?

from hawk.

First off to those who are looking to implement the protocol in their servers, so that would fall in to the existing README. I'd also put something in the same area that anyone who is implementing this in their servers needs to ensure that their users are clear as to the specifics of what is being authenticated when so that there are no mistakes made.

For my part, I haven't thought it through yet but suspect that I'll add options in to the Java implementation so that the server can be configured to carry out payload verification (by reading in the body as part of the authentication process) for everything or with exclusions based on MIME type and/or content size.

from hawk.

Can you suggest language for the readme? Maybe we should start an 'implementation notes' section with advice from other authors?

from hawk.

Sent a pull request for the readme.

Would certainly make sense to add an implementation notes section, and happy to contribute to it.

from hawk.

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